Christian apologist Josh McDowell shared a shocking testimony during the Together 2016 event on the National Mall in Washington D.C. last Saturday.
The author of such books as "More Than a Carpenter" and "Evidence for Christianity" revealed that he was raped starting at the age of six and wanted desperately to die until he found Salvation through Jesus Christ.
"As I share, you need to realise you meet people every day just like me," McDowell said, according to The Christian Post.
McDowell's sexual abuse happened when he was six to 13 years old. His mother hired a housekeeper to watch over him while she went out of town for the weekend, and ordered him to obey the housekeeper or face harsh punishment.
When he turned nine, McDowell gathered the courage to tell his mother the sexual abuse their housekeeper was inflicting on him. But instead of believing him, she took him out to the backyard and beat him for 30 minutes. The beating got so bad that McDowell decided to cry out "I'm lying!" just to get his mother to stop.
McDowell learned to fight back when he was 13. When the housekeeper tried to attack him again, he grabbed the man's throat, shoved him against the wall and said, "If you ever touch me again, I will kill you."
The sexual assault might have stopped then, but McDowell said he carried the trauma of the abuse all throughout his adult years. Thankfully for him, he was introduced to God.
A small group of Christians at his college in Michigan were the ones who first shared the Gospel with him. But the message did not initially resonate with him since he was raised by a father who was an abusive alcoholic.
It took a while before McDowell acknowledged God's Word. He finally embraced Jesus when he reached his emotional breaking point. He then shared his horrific past to the man who led him to Jesus. Unlike all the other adults in his life who refused to believe in him, this Christian man accepted his truth.
McDowell said the only thing he really needed, aside from the Gospel, was someone to believe him.
"One of the smartest things I ever realised was that I needed more than Jesus," McDowell said. "I needed a group of men around me...who would be there at 2 o' clock in the morning when I wanted to end it all."
"There's nothing too great in your life that God can't reset," McDowell said, "nor anything too small that He's not interested in."
